ACCES’ speed mentoring marathon gives newcomers connections

When immigrants move to Canada, they have to cope with leaving behind friends and loved ones, but they also leave behind a network of professional contacts. It’s an age-old problem for newcomers to the Canadian job market: getting hired is difficult when everyone who can vouch for your experience is in another country or speaks another language.

The 2015 Speed Mentoring Marathon, hosted by ACCES Employment, was held at the downtown Toronto Marriott on May 13 to address this obstacle.

Speed Mentoring Marathon

The event attracted 150 mentors from 80 companies in the six sectors of human resources, sales and marketing, information technology, financial services, supply chain and engineering.

Serving more than 16,000 jobseekers across the GTA, ACCES Employment uses strategies such as speed mentoring to assist new immigrants in finding employment.

ACCES Employment executive director Allison Pond believes the key to job success in Canada can be summed up in one word.

“Networks,” says Pond. “It’s all about networks and connections because we know that’s the most effective way people find work.”

Speed mentoring connects employers to a pool of talent sourced from ACCES’s programs. Each mentee spends 10 minutes talking one-on-one to different employers in their field. The help mentors provide ranges from general advice and tips on who’s hiring to reviewing CVs.

“A lot of it is about getting employers engaged and we really believe that’s an important part in helping newcomers find work,” says Pond.

“You’re getting a big bang for your buck as far as I’m concerned,” says Damian Hutchinson, a mentee who moved to Toronto from Jamaica last November.

“ACCES pairs you with individuals who know the industry, who are sector-specific, and they know how to guide and coach you, and you can’t get that anywhere else,” says Hutchinson.

Advice from mentor to mentees

Andrew Graydon, a senior IT manager at Accenture, is an immigrant originally from Ireland himself. He attended the event to pass on the knowledge he has gained from 14 years in the Canadian market.

“I talked to mentees about focus,” says Graydon. “I talked to them about sitting down and making a plan instead of applying blindly to 300 jobs in a week.”

Graydon says experienced newcomers tend to only focus on big companies such as TD or CIBC, and he advised mentees to search for more readily available equivalent jobs in small and medium-sized businesses.

Vera Correa moved to Canada with her husband two months ago to avoid the unstable political situation in her native country of Venezuela. She found herself in a new and incredibly competitive field.

“That was my biggest challenge, I’m from a very specific industry and I didn’t know anybody in that industry,” says Correa, whose background is in media marketing.

Correa jumped straight into ACCES’s bridging program to help her find work, a path that led her to the great networking opportunities speed mentoring provides.

“I’m really grateful to ACCES for all that they’ve done, because it really does help you,” says Correa, who recently secured an internship with Tania DeSa International through ACCES. “I’m finding results come from meeting people, not necessarily from sending a lot of CVs out.”

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Founded in 2004, the magazine began with a mandate to "inform, educate and motivate" immigrants to Canada and assist them in their new found journey. Since then, the magazine has grown to be the only national multi-platform brand for all immigrants to Canada, on topics from careers to education to settlement.
Canadian Immigrant not only connects newcomers in Canada, but also aspiring immigrants from more than 150 countries.

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